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Director of Strategy 

About Lyonshare

Lyonshare is a strategic finance, investor positioning and design agency for startups and funds. Following their work with Lyonshare, clients have raised >$10B in capital from VCs like USV, RRE, and Greycroft, institutions like Cambridge Associates, Brown, and Invesco, and strategics like Zoom, Chegg, and Estee Lauder. Fund clients include Bain Capital Ventures, Dragonfly Capital Partners and Chelsea Clinton's Metrodora; startups include Solvvy, Kirontech, and Boost Insurance. The founder of Lyonshare Kelly Lyons is also an investor and co-founder of Atlas Financial (a Lightspeed-backed fintech), and prior investment banker.

About the Role

Lyonshare is seeking a full-time team member focused on delivering financial, business building, and fundraising strategic analysis to our startups and fund clients. You will work closely with Lyonshare's founder and directly at the management/founder/GP team level to deliver actionable CFO-level insights and assets like business plans, investor decks, partnerships decks. To excel in this role you’ll need strong critical thinking, problem solving, and project/relationship management skills as well as advanced financial acumen and writing abilities. 

Extraordinarily high commercial and leadership instinct will position you well to gain further direct exposure to the management teams; while you will initially work with our founder, the long-term goal would be to have you working directly with management teams without her involvement. You'll co-lead a team of designers and contractors and be the main point of contact for all clients. 

A superstar will bolster a strong sense of expert-advisory respect and trust, fostering long-term relationships with clients that want to grow their relationship with the firm. In addition to providing strategic analysis, a superstar will own team management, project management, and client relationship management.

This position is most similar to investment banking advisory, management consulting, and GP portfolio success work. For context, our truest "competitor" on the startup services side are the hands-on GPs themselves.

Location

Our business team works in a flexible, hybrid work environment in downtown New York City.
We’re open to considering remote U.S. candidates.

Employment Status

This is a full-time role, starting ASAP. We're also considering "contract to hire" candidates who could start on a part-time or project basis with the intention of transitioning to full-time.

Core Responsibilities

  • Strategic analysis
    Provide strategic advice to clients, prepare and review investor/pitch decks, conduct market research, analyze financial data to support decisions, prepare for diligence and fundraises

  • Client relationship management
    Build and maintain relationships with C-suite level clients, acting as the point of contact for project-related matters, strategic advice, and expansion of initial client contracts

  • Project management
    Lead and oversee client projects, including initial staffing, execution, and followup client success

  • Team management
    Manage contractors and designers who are involved in the client projects you are overseeing

  • Business development
    Participate in select client pitches, identify new business opportunities, work with BD to develop and refine Lyonshare's own BD materials, and contribute to the firm's overall growth. Represent Lyonshare at certain events

Potential Additional Responsibilities

  • Help BD prepare custom client scopes

  • Director of finance work like FP&A and financial modeling if the skillset supports this work (otherwise provided by Lyonshare founder or Lyonshare director of finance)

  • Eventually fully owning core responsibilities, with limited involvement from Lyonshare founder who currently leads many of these efforts

Requirements

  • Strong financial analysis and business acumen

  • Excellent communication and writing skills, a successful track record of developing fundraising and pitch materials

  • Action-oriented with a can-do attitude, sense of urgency, thrives in a fast-paced work environment with limited oversight

  • Ability to manage ambiguity, deal comfortably with the uncertainty of change, and handle risk, re-evaluating and updating your responsibilities on the fly and with confidence

  • High EQ, with the ability to expertly handle the nuances of client interactions

  • Minimum four years of relevant work experience, though 15 years would also be welcome. We’re open to considering candidates at a variety of experience levels for this role–title and compensation will be commensurate with experience

  • Proven relevant professional experience: investment banking, VC or another investing role, founder/startup operator, management consulting

  • Bachelor’s Degree with a strong record of high academic achievement